How to Set Page Margins in Word 2016

Margins in Word 2016 documents create the text area on a page, left, right, top, and bottom. They provide room between the text and the page’s edge, which keeps the text from leaking out of a document and all over the computer.

Word automatically sets page margins at 1 inch from every page edge. Most English teachers and book editors want margins of this size because these people love to scribble in margins. (They even write that way on blank paper.)

To adjust page margins in Word, obey these steps:

Click the Layout tab.

Click the Margins button.

It’s found in the Page Setup group and shown here.

Clicking the Margins button displays a menu full of common margin options.

Pluck a proper margin setting from the menu.

The new margins affect all pages in your document — unless you split your document into sections, in which case the changes apply to only the current section.

The choices available on the Margins menu list settings for the top, left, bottom, and right margins. Yes, all four margins are set at one time. When you want to set specific margins, choose the Custom Margins item from the bottom of the menu, and then use the Margins tab in the Page Setup dialog box to set each margin.

Many printers cannot print on the outside half inch of a piece of paper, usually on one side — top, bottom, left, or right. This space is an absolute margin; although you can tell Word to set a margin of 0 inches, text may not print there. Instead, choose a minimum of 0.5 inches for all margins.